Before
the Court is a motion for summary judgment by Defendant,
Walgreen Company. (Doc. 27.) Plaintiff Sheila
(“Krys”) Killen has responded (Doc. 34), and
Defendant has replied (Doc. 38). Also before the Court is a
motion by Defendant to strike affidavits and exhibits filed
by Plaintiff. (Doc. 40.) Plaintiff has responded (Doc. 42),
and Defendant has replied (Doc. 44). For the following
reasons, the Court will DENY Defendant's
motion to strike (Doc. 40), and GRANT IN
PART and DENY IN PART
Defendant's motion for summary judgment (Doc. 27).

The
Court will GRANT the motion for summary
judgment as to Plaintiff's claims for age discrimination
and maintaining a hostile work environment under the Age
Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”), 29
U.S.C. §§ 623, 626; for sex discrimination, age
discrimination, and through maintaining a hostile work
environment under the Tennessee Human Rights Act
(“THRA”), Tenn. Code Ann. §§
4-21-401(a), 4-21-311; and for disability discrimination, and
through maintaining a hostile work environment under the
Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), 42
U.S.C. §§ 12102, et seq. The Court will
DENY the motion as to Plaintiff's claims
for retaliation under the ADEA, the THRA, and the ADA.

I.
BACKGROUND

This
action concerns Plaintiff's five years of employment with
Defendant Walgreen Company (“Walgreen”). (Doc.
25.)[1]
The allegations span three different store locations, and
Plaintiff's complaint invokes ten different causes of
action. (See id.)

Plaintiff
is a fifty-nine-year-old white female. (Doc. 37 ¶ 1.)
She is a breast cancer survivor and also suffers from a heart
condition which has required hospitalization. (Id.
¶ 2.)[2]

Plaintiff
began her employment with Walgreen in August 2011 as a
customer service representative at its Johnson City State of
Franklin Road retail store and pharmacy (the “Johnson
City store”). (Id. ¶ 3.) Prior to her
start, the woman who would serve as Plaintiff's manager,
Renee Burleson, told current employees that Plaintiff was not
a real blonde, was “not all there, ” did not have
any sense, and could not get the job done. (Doc. 35 at ¶
4.) Once Plaintiff started working at the Johnson City store,
Burleson used the word “stupid” to describe
Plaintiff's work activities to other employees, talked to
Plaintiff in a condescending voice, and raised her voice or
yelled at her for taking too much time on tasks.
(Id. ¶¶ 8-11.) Burleson called Plaintiff
“She She, ” and made her wear a name tag
reflecting the name “She She, ” in spite of
Plaintiff's protests. (Id. ¶¶ 9, 12;
Doc. 37-1.)

Plaintiff
complained to the store manager, Tim Mullins, who transferred
Plaintiff to a new location-the Broadway-Unaka Walgreen store
(the “Broadway-Unaka store”). (Doc. 35 ¶ 21;
Doc. 37 ¶ 3.) Plaintiff got along well with her new
manager, Winston Richey, received several promotions, and was
named as one of the store's shift leads. (Doc. 35 ¶
21; Doc. 36 ¶ 7.) Plaintiff worked as shift lead for
approximately eight months, until Burleson was transferred to
be her supervisor once again, but now at the Broadway-Unaka
store. (Doc. 36 ¶ 8.) Plaintiff received several written
reprimands from Burleson, but Plaintiff refused to sign them
because she found them unjustified. (Doc. 37 ¶ 13.) The
reprimands were discipline for incurring overtime by clocking
out late, taking a cell phone call in the restroom, refusing
to answer intercom pages, and for telling a younger male
associate “go play with yourself.” (Doc. 37
¶¶ 14-16, 20-28, 40.) The bases of the written
warnings were not always factually correct, or were
exaggerated-for instance, Plaintiff observed that the younger
male associate was playing with a rubber ball and Plaintiff
said, or intended to say, “go play by yourself.”
(Id. ¶ 26.) Because of daily hostility from
Burleson, Plaintiff became a “nervous wreck” at
Walgreen. (Id. ¶ 38.)

On
December 3, 2015, Plaintiff emailed District Manager Gregg
McCollum stating that she could no longer work under
Burleson. (Id. ¶ 43.) She also called
Walgreen's complaint hotline the next day and described
the work environment Burleson had created. (Id.
¶ 44.) After speaking with a hotline representative and
meeting with McCollum personally, Plaintiff requested a
transfer to Walgreen's Boone's Creek store location
(the “Boone's Creek store”). (Id.
¶ 47.) On December 9, 2015, Plaintiff also emailed Randy
Reddick, Walgreen's Director of Pharmacy and Retail
Operations, about her concerns. (Id. ¶ 53.)

Within
two weeks of her complaint to McCollum, McCollum transferred
Plaintiff to Walgreen's Piney Flats store location (the
“Piney Flats store”), instead of the Boone's
Creek store which she had requested. (Id. ¶
55.) Plaintiff found the transfer “unusual”
because there was no existing shift lead vacancy at the Piney
Flats store, but there was a vacancy at the Boone's Creek
store. (Id.) The female shift lead at the Piney
Flats store, Cathleen Bradshaw, was approximately eight to
nine years younger than Plaintiff. (Id. ¶ 56.)
Within a week of Plaintiff's start at the Piney Flats
store, Bradshaw was transferred to the Boone's Creek
store to fill the vacancy Plaintiff had requested to fill.
(Id. ¶ 58.)

Plaintiff
was not happy to be transferred to the Piney Flats store
because she had heard that the manager, Robert Leigh, was a
difficult manager. (Id. ¶ 57.) Leigh was
“cool” toward Plaintiff from the start.
(Id. ¶ 59.) In late December 2015, Leigh
approached Plaintiff from behind and told her in a
“somewhat threatening tone, ” “if you feel
like you're being watched, you are.” (Id.
¶ 59.) He then added “I am watching you.”
(Id.) This remark unnerved Plaintiff and made her
continuously on edge for the rest of her employment at the
Piney Flats store. (Id.) Leigh also started slamming
management store books down on his desk in order to startle
Plaintiff, and once vented his anger by shoving a metal dolly
towards her. (Id. ¶ 60-61.)

Plaintiff
began experiencing persistent chest pain. (Id.
¶ 62.) Plaintiff went to the emergency room on January
1, 2016, and was hospitalized at length due to a significant
blockage in one of her arteries. (Id.) She missed
six weeks of work during recovery, and returned on February
22, 2016. (Id.)

Leigh
informed a claims manager via an email sent January 11, 2016
that the store would not be able to accommodate a shift lead
returning to work on “restricted duty, ” but that
the shift lead would otherwise need to be able to perform
“heavy work, ” as described in the shift lead job
duties. (Id. ¶ 65; Doc. 37-11.)

When
Plaintiff returned to work, Leigh and Pharmacy Manager Matt
Lunsik met with Plaintiff, and gave her a verbal warning
about her failure to complete a “smart
count”[3] and other work assignments in late
December, before her hospitalization. (Doc. 37 ¶ 66.) At
the meeting, Leigh told Plaintiff she would be discharged if
her performance did not improve. (Id. ¶ 66.)

The
next day, February 23, 2016, Leigh and McCollum met with
Plaintiff. (Id. ¶ 67.) They told her she was
getting a “new start” with Walgreen.
(Id.) During the meeting, Leigh also told Plaintiff
that she was “too slow.” (Id.) Leigh met
with Plaintiff once a week thereafter. (Id.) Leigh
told Plaintiff that she needed to work faster. (Id.)

On
April 8, 2016, Leigh told Plaintiff that he had seen some
improvement in her work and that Plaintiff would need to
continue to show “major improvement” during the
next month. (Id. ¶ 68.) Leigh then began
assigning Plaintiff “self-improvement articles”
to read, and required Plaintiff to write one-page essay
commentaries on what Plaintiff gleaned from each article.
(Id.) Leigh did not block off time during the day
for her to complete the articles, so Plaintiff read them
after she got home from work each night. (Id. ¶
70.) On April 11, 2016, Leigh assigned Plaintiff two articles
to read, but Plaintiff could not get both of the assignments
done in one week. (Id. ¶ 77.) On one occasion,
Plaintiff was given leave to select an article to read, but
when she turned in her essay, Leigh told her she had chosen
the “wrong one, ” and directed her to read and
write an essay on a different article of his choice.
(Id. ¶ 78.) Plaintiff did not see any relevance
in reading articles about time management, as Walgreen
prioritized her job duties and planned her work day for her
through assignment sheets which listed chores to be performed
between predetermined times. (Id. ¶ 79.)

Leigh
had successfully utilized the method of assigning articles
and essay summaries with a male pharmacist whom he had
supervised. (Doc. 29 ¶ 10.) The self-improvement
articles were available through a Walgreen
employee-improvement “library, ” and related to
an employee's discretionary activities and personality
development. (Doc. 36 ¶ 19.)

At some
point during the spring of 2016, Leigh showed Plaintiff into
the storeroom and pointed out several cardboard boxes
containing gallon jugs of liquid detergent sitting atop the
storage shelves. (Doc. 37 ¶ 71.) Each box contained four
one-gallon jugs of liquid detergent, and weighed nearly fifty
pounds each. (Id.) Plaintiff was instructed to put
the boxes on the floor. In order to do so, she had to get a
step ladder, open each box, take each jug out separately, and
go down the ladder with each jug. (Id. ¶ 72.)
Leigh later had Plaintiff repeat the same task after someone
placed the boxes back onto the shelf. (Id.
¶¶ 74-75.) Plaintiff believed Leigh was attempting
to convince her to resign. (Id. ¶ 76.)

From
May to June of 2016, Plaintiff discovered that the Piney
Flats store's side-door had been left unlocked and ajar
on three different occasions during her evening security
walk. (Id. ¶ 92.) The side door could not be
unlocked unless a manager used a key to open the door and
turn off an alarm. (Id.) Each time Plaintiff found
the door open, she reported the incident to Leigh.
(Id.) Because the door continued to be left ajar,
Plaintiff believed Leigh was setting her up to accuse her of
missing the open door during her security check.
(Id.)

On June
7, 2016, Leigh and Lunsik met with Plaintiff and placed her
on a Performance Improvement Plan (a “PIP”).
(Id. ¶ 93.) Under the PIP, Leigh assigned seven
more self-improvement articles. (Doc. 28-11 at 6.)
Leigh's notes on meetings with Plaintiff in the PIP
reflected the following, errors in original:

• 12/15/15 - Initial meeting, laid out the expectation
of working at this location

• 2/22/16 - Conducted meeting that was to happen on 1/4,
meeting did not happen due to her medical leave, reviewed: 1)
My concerns toward her performance before she went out on
leave 2) her options 3) retraining process 4) Steps if her
performance does not improve. (Matt Lunsik was present for
this meeting)

• 2/22/16 - A verbal warning was issued for not
completing assigned task. (Matt Lunsik was present for this
meeting)

• 2/23/16 - (with District Manager Greg McCollum)
expressed that she wanted a fair shot. He explained that this
was a new start, also that I communicated in December that
yesterdays meeting was going to take place.

• 3/4/16 - Asked for update on PPL's, she said she
was working on them. I explained that they were already
overdue and needed to be completed.

• 3/7/16 - Recapped her day on Friday 3/4, Not much work
was completed, explained that she needed to speed things up,
she has one pace, very slow. Told her she must manage her
time, 48 Minutes of overtime in the last pay week. (Matt
Lunsik was present for this meeting)

• 3/9/16 - Gave her the HMM on time management.
Explained that this was not required, but I thought it might
help her

• 3/10/16 - 28 minutes of overtime last week. Explained
that she was to have no overtime going forward unless
approved by me.

• 3/14/16 - Hanging of ad tags must be done before store
opens. Let her know that training with Christy on Friday went
well according to Christy (Randy Kind &. Matt Lunsik were
present for this meeting)

• 3/18/16 - Reviewed the following 1) Working the list
and leading your team 2) Taking lunches 3) Code green,
attitude toward the pharmacy techs. (Matt Lunsik was present
for this meeting)

• 3/26/16 - Let her know to page me when she could not
get to a call. Coached her on working the list, both her and
Taylor working OSA (not even on the list) with truck sitting
in the stockroom. Also spoke about time management &
worrying about what she is doing instead of Randy (ASM) &
Christy (SFL) are doing

• 3/30/16 - Spoke about previous day when I was out
sick. Not much work completed.

• 4/1/16 - Got her feedback on how she thought
everything was going to help prep for her 30 day check-in
• 4/8/16 - Coached on pharmacy issue from previous night

• 4/8/16 - 30 day check-in. Explained that I was not
ready to issue a verbal warning at this time due to starting
to see some improvement, and that major improvement was
needed in the next 30 days. Also explained that I was going
to use a different approach using some reading to help with
the problem areas. 60 day check in scheduled for 5/9/16 (Matt
Lunsik was present for this meeting)

• 5/9/16 - 60 day check-in. Explained that this check in
was going to be her verbal warning for overall performance.
Discussed issues. She stated that there were too many
interruptions and that I expected to much. Assigned her next
article "The Up Side Of Stress" 90 day check in
scheduled for 6/6/16 (Matt Lunsik was present for this
meeting)

• 5/31/16 - Reviewed weekend performance and notes for
current day due to new crew members

• 6/1/16 - Reviewed issues from the the previous night

• 6/13/16 - Issued verbal warning for overtime. Had
overtime in each of the last 3 pay periods

(Doc. 28-11 at 4-5.) Leigh noted that the competencies in
which Plaintiff needed improvement were people leadership,
functional competency, operations/business leadership,
communication, time management, multitasking, and sense of
urgency. (Id. at 5-6.) In the portion of the PIP
where Plaintiff could provide her own comments, she wrote the
following, errors in original,

since I have been transferred to this store I have had my
position threatening, harassed, singled out and been told to
write summarys and was a secret between the pharmacist
matthew and mr. leigh, and was told not to tell anyone else.
I thinks when I was transfer to this store and the reason why
I was really transfer to this store, mr. leigh says he
don't know and don't care. I am contacting the EECO
for help, policy state this harassment, and I have email Mr.
McCollum, and I have done everthing he have ask and will but
the harrassement has to stop and the threats to. I will not
sign this because I don't agree with it. I will do the
assignment and I have done everthing he ask.

(Id. at 10.) In the “30 Day PIP
Follow-up” portion of the PIP, Leigh entered the
...

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